Making Japanese Agriculture Smart, Exciting, and Profitable

Case studies of agricultural innovation by beginning young farmers

Abstract

Agricultural statistical data show a shrinking agricultural market over the long term in Japan. To switch this trend to a setting on its way to a growth stage, generating agricultural innovation will be essential. In business science, the concept of what promotes innovation is said to be entrepreneurship. This paper offers three case studies to discuss the way to rebuild Japanese agriculture from the viewpoint of theories of entrepreneurship and innovation.

The leading player of these cases is Yusuke Miyaji. He was born in 1978 and graduated from university in 2000. He worked for a large corporation for 5 years. In 2005, he returned to Miyaji Swine Farm, which his parents managed as a small sized family farm, to start his farming business.

His mission is “Making primary industry smart, exciting and profitable.” He began with a BBQ party. Afterwards, party participants ordered pork meat directly from the farm or some of them introduced the product to restaurants. In this way, Miyaji Farm was able to develop it’s own market. Mr. Miyaji points out that his efforts to change his business model was an essential innovation. Miyaji Farm has created a new business model which can be said to be a drop shipping model. In this model, Miyaji Farm receives an order from customer, then passes the order on to a contracted meat packing factory. The factory arranges the order, packages it, and delivers it to the customer. The meat packer takes on the cutting, packaging and delivery of the product. So Miyaji Farm does not bear any risk of inventory loss.

Next, Mr. Miyaji worked on the activities to make his mission true. He established Beginning Farmer Network in 2009. This organization conducts many activities, such as :

• Opening a market at the city center

• A collaborative project with an agricultural experimental restaurant

• A collaborative project on internet sales with an IT company

• Offering agricultural work-study programs to city people

• Agribusiness planning competition and so on

Mr. Miyaji focuses on farm family sons and daughters who currently now work in a non-agricultural sector, or who are still students, or are beginning farmers who have already taken over their family farm. The reason Mr. Miyaji focuses on them because they have advantages over non-farm newcomers in generating agricultural innovation. Also, they have acquired business skills and experiences their parents do not have. When mixing their new skills and experiences with their parents’ technical skills and traditional experiences, a new explosion can come into the farming business.

Mr. Miyaji considered the process of agricultural innovation and his conclusions are that the process follows four stages as follows :

–– the stage of awakening interest in the family farm

–– the stage of returning back to the family farm and starting to work

–– the stage of building entrepreneurship

–– the stage of generating innovation in the farming business

The third case study is the family business succession seminar. Mr. Miyaji holds this seminar several times a year to foster entrepreneurship of young farmers. He thinks entrepreneurship is built and strengthened through family business succession processes. Mr. Miyaji focuses on young beginning farmers who will be a trigger for the expansion of agricultural markets in Japan.